Finally, Mr. F. J. Jackson, in his interesting volume on ‘Big Game Shooting,’ gives us the following information on this Antelope:—“The Paa is found throughout East Africa in thick and open bush on dry sandy soil. It is exceedingly plentiful on Manda Island, opposite Lamu, Merereni, the thick bush east of Taveta, and again in Ngaboto in the Suk country. It is the smallest of the East-African Antelopes, and is usually bagged with a shot-gun and No. 5 shot, as it darts about among the bush and scrub like a rabbit. The flesh of this little beast has a strong flavour of musk and is very disagreeable to eat at all times, but in the rutting season is altogether uneatable; the natives, however, revel in it. Its note of alarm is between a shrill whistle and a scream. It feeds on the leaves of various shrubs, and doubtless its curious little prehensile nose is admirably adapted to securing its food. The Paa is found throughout the year in the driest and most arid wildernesses, where for several months there is neither rain nor even a drop of standing water for many miles round. It is therefore quite evident that the juices of the vegetation on which it feeds and the dews at night are sufficient for its requirements. The best way to obtain this little beast is to take three or four men to act as beaters, and they must thoroughly beat every bush at all likely to hold a buck, as it is in the habit of lying very close, and it takes a good deal to move it, but when once started it affords capital snap-shots.”
South of Kilimanjaro this Dik-dik has been obtained by Herr Neumann at several localities in the interior of German East Africa, in Irangi and Northern Ugogo, and on Mount Gurui, and by Böhmer near Mpapwa. But Sir John Kirk assures us that in his extensive experience he has never met with it on the coast south of the Sabaki River.
The variations in colour of this species have caused us some difficulty, as while some specimens are strongly black-lined, without any, or with little, rufous on the sides, neck, and throat, others are clear rufous, almost without lining, on these parts. The strongest-lined specimen we have seen comes from Kilimanjaro[4], while the most rufous is from Lamu. Curiously enough, however, the types, from Brava, South Somaliland, are fairly intermediate in their colour between the two, although, if anything, rather more like the one geographically most distant, that from Kilimanjaro.
In the skulls again, while, as is usual in these Antelopes, considerable differences are to be observed between any two skulls compared together, these differences do not appear to be correlated either with locality or colour-characters. In fact, with regard to the extension backwards of the premaxillæ towards the nasals, one specimen in the British Museum Collection has the two extremes on the two sides of its skull, showing conclusively that this character cannot be relied upon.
We have therefore come to the conclusion that, so far as the colour and skull-characters here mentioned are concerned, the Kilimanjaro, Lamu, and Brava Dik-diks cannot be separated from one another, even as subspecies or local races.
December, 1895.
57. GÜNTHER’S DIK-DIK.
MADOQUA GUENTHERI, Thos.
[PLATE XXXI. Fig. 1.]
Neotragus, sp., Lort Phillips, P. Z. S. 1885, p. 932 (Somali plateau).
Neotragus kirkii, Scl. P. Z. S. 1886, p. 504; id. in James, Unknown Horn of Africa, p. 269 (1888).
Madoqua guentheri, Thos. P. Z. S. 1894, p. 324 (figs. of skull) (Ogaden); Hoyos, Zu den Aulihan, p. 185 (1895); Swayne, Somaliland, p. 318 (1895).